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[patito]

Yeah, if you read stuff about Breivik he seems pretty well in his right mind. His killing was justified in his mind by his own set of beliefs, not because he had hallucinations or whatever.

[Shinra]

No, I'm trying to remove the stigma of "mental illness = psychotic." By comparing it to the military - which has a history of killing random children, women, families, etc - I'm trying to separate the impulse to lump random killing in with a rather nebulous term as "mentally ill." And Breivik wasn't declard "mentally fit" because the government wanted it, he was declared thus because psychological evaluations by trained professionals determined it.

No, Breivik was literally declared mentally fit because that's what he wanted and what the government wanted.

First evaluation pegged him as insane.

Furthermore, being fit to stand trial is not the same thing as not having a mental disorder. Pretty much everything Brievik has done and said pegs him as a sociopath, and the sociopaths are fully in control of their own actions. The inability to feel morality has nothing to do with whether or not they're culpable to stand trial, because they are still capable of distinguishing societal right from societal wrong. They simply don't care. To Andrew Brievik, it was more about getting his name in the papers than it was about enjoying the rest of his life as a free man.

As someone who has been diagnosed with mental illness, I can safely say that 'this is something I don't mind being a part of the public discussion'. I'd prefer it, to be honest. Maybe it'll be fucking easier to seriously push for mental health coverage in our insurance plans - I've worked in IT for six years now and this is the first time I haven't had to go to a county clinic to get my meds filled. Every insurance plan I've had previous to HP replaced 'mental health coverage' with 'call these minimum wage workers in india and talk about your problems'. I wish I was fucking kidding, but there it is.

[Shinra]

Yeah, if you read stuff about Breivik he seems pretty well in his right mind. His killing was justified in his mind by his own set of beliefs, not because he had hallucinations or whatever.

The reason that KKK members don't run around shooting every black person they see is because fear and their basic survival instincts motivate them to keep their hatred in check. The ones who do go a'killin tend to be parts of mobs or under the influence.

What if you didn't have survival instinct, or the ability to feel fear, and your outlook on the world was that everything was secondary to yourself? That's sociopathy. It's a mental illness. Andrew Breivik was a sociopath. The body count, the fact that he didn't take his own life when he finished his rampage, that he lobbied deliberately to be declared sane, and has taken every opportunity to smile at the camera and give interviews and generally make a giant ass of himself all adds up to the same equation. He is not sane. He is just 'competent'. That's all you need to be to stand trial.

[Brentai]

There are also the twin assumptions that mental illness can neither spontaneously manifest nor spontaneously resolve itself.

That said, what I'm hearing in this situation is that there were enough obvious warning signs to make someone think "I should probably make these weapons inacceseidkxmjurfcuijknmrfhjbnrfjnufrc

Hi sorry I'm in a theater and they're playing a preview for this King of the Nerds thing.  Brb, accessing weapons.

[Shinra]

There are also the twin assumptions that mental illness can neither spontaneously manifest nor spontaneously resolve itself.

That said, what I'm hearing in this situation is that there were enough obvious warning signs to make someone think "I should probably make these weapons inacceseidkxmjurfcuijknmrfhjbnrfjnufrc

Hi sorry I'm in a theater and they're playing a preview for this King of the Nerds thing.  Brb, accessing weapons.

My point is that if people took the dangers of a mental disorder - like, say, bipolar type I /w severe swings (I will bet cash money {not really} that this turns out to be the case) more seriously, maybe this guy's mother wouldn't have kept a bunch of loaded assault weapons in the house with him.

[A²]

When I worked for Verizon, I at first did not hide my mental past. Someone cracked a joke about straitjackets, and I said "They're a lot tighter than they look" and we had what I thought was a good larf where I explained what it felt like to be in one, how the orderlies were like, what a mental hospital was like, all that sort of thing.

Later, the second in command pulls me aside and says that two people no longer feel safe sitting next to me.

This is less than five years ago. People very clearly fear mentally ill people, because they think we're all one cough short of flipping out and killing everyone in a five mile radius. In some part, we are still boogeymen in society. I just straight up lie or hide about my mental illness now, lest I get more bullshit like that.

This ties into shit that's going to come in the next few weeks that will still remain unanswered, a desire to figure out some bulletpoint list of why this happened. Some one or two word phrase that we can just write it off and say "Oh this caused it" and the parents can refuse to admit blame for not helping their child, or society can just say it's an errant part that can be cut off.

[Büge]

http://www.alan.com/2012/12/16/senator-to-introduce-assault-weapons-ban-in-january/

[Bal]

You know, Shinra, I'm getting a pretty strong "brand the insane" vibe off your train of thought here. I have bi-polar 1, and a history of severe mood swings, and the only medication I take is for anxiety. Should I be carrying around a sanity license?

[McDohl]

I don't have a source, but I heard on the radio last night that the suspect was diagnosed with Asperger's. 

[Shinra]

You know, Shinra, I'm getting a pretty strong "brand the insane" vibe off your train of thought here. I have bi-polar 1, and a history of severe mood swings, and the only medication I take is for anxiety. Should I be carrying around a sanity license?

If you're Bipolar I and not medicated for it, I would argue that you should be carrying around a sanity license and your family and support system should be held legally accountable for your actions if you go off the deep end on a manic swing. So, yes?

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I'm sure I could find a few schizophrenic people on the internet who will make the same argument. The point isn't that all people with an illness should be shunned, but we need to recognize that volatility is a factor in things like this. In the case of bipolar, it's usually self harm rather than harming others, but even then, isn't that cause for alarm? We keep talking about gun control, when gun control wouldn't have stopped this crime from happening, even on the magnitude it happened with anything short of a comprehensive gun ban. While we don't know enough about this guy to say definitively it's a result of unchecked mental illness, I think it's a pretty safe bet.

There needs to be a better understanding of when somebody is sick like this and there needs to be a system to create accountability and prevent these things from happening. I think better access to mental health care and a better understanding from families and friends of the afflicted would go a long way towards preventing meltdowns before they happen.

[Bal]

There need to be better systems in place to address serious mental illness when in manifests, but as for a sanity license politely go fuck yourself.

[Mongrel]

Okay. I don't think Shinra wants to brand the insane and I don't think that getting confrontational is going to produce any kind of useful discussion. So if we wanna go down that route forget it.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that people who are in trouble or hurting shouldn't get the help they need. I also think that Constantine is right that there are now some objective measures in place to gauge severeness and type of mental illness, though my opinon is that the treatment of mental health issues is still in its infancy, only one step ahead of the neural equivalent of sawing limbs off and pouring on hot tar (I would say THAT was the Victorian/Early 20th Century era). We just don't understand the brain well enough yet to really properly analyse problems, let alone treat them meaningfully.

What I'm trying to get at is that by definition mental illness means something has gone "wrong". Now, in spite of some recent advances, I would say that we do not fully understand the human brain anything near enough to make words like "wrong" anything near to objective. We do so based on context - our social mores, historical norms, utilitarianism, etc. "Wrong" is obviously a loaded and partially subjective term. Also, it can mean wrong internally (I feel bad) or it can mean wrong from an external point of view (doesn't get along well with others).

The point being that someone who goes out and kills a large number of people who they had no previous interactions with and who (in this case and in the Norway case) are generally seen as vulnerable and blameless, is "wrong" on both points. It's wrong in every goddamned possible way. There's no "right" random killing of a bunch of children.

Separately, you can talk about military killings or whatever else, but those are at least rooted in social mores that (for good or ill) most of us have chosen to accept - or at least to not fight. We may not like killing or war personally, but we get why they happen and why people participate in them. To conflate the two as "it's all just killin'" or whatever, masks the causes of both to the detriment of any kind of useful problem solving.

EDIT: Warning - while you were typing 3 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Okay, maybe you guys do want to fight like idiots after all. NEVER MIND.

[Shinra]

I was really just engaging hyperbole with hyperbole. No, I don't think you should have to carry a license around saying you're sane/insane. But I do legitimately think that maybe it's about time people be legally obligated to take medication that makes them not crazy.

A problem that seems pretty universal in mental illness is people not wanting to take their meds. I do it myself. There's this idea that you can handle it yourself, or it's manageable without medication, except it's really not and you're a victim of your own assumption of normality. You don't feel crazy when you're manic, so you don't need the pills to make you not manic. The problem is that you're driving 80 in a 45 and you haven't slept for more than 3 hours at a time in the last ten days. Or every time you pass over a bridge you think about driving off. Or you think about merging into oncoming traffic.

Every time I fall off my meds I end up getting increasingly more volatile until my wife threatens to leave me if I don't get back on my meds, or I have to have a pow-wow with my boss at work about why I just screamed expletives and started throwing shit across the room or why I haven't shown up to work in 3 days with 'NOT ABLE TO SLEEP' as the reason. Shit has to get that bad for me to even start it back up. Basically, I have a support system that bullies me into staying medicated when I don't want to. Without that support system, I'd be an unemployable, anti-social wreck constantly floating between suicidal depression and dangerous mania. And my case is, quote, "mild". Unchecked bipolar is why I didn't have a job that didn't involve Pizza until I was 22.

[Mongrel]

I think that people taking their meds is an issue in some cases, but that extrapolating a solution from one's personal circumstances might not be the best response.

Also: Jeez does that suck, man.

[Bal]

And if medication were magic pills that always worked, that would be wonderful, but I'm not even rare in that there are no drugs I've taken that work, and few drugs left that I haven't tried, and all of those have serious side effects. For the record, I have regular appointments with a psychiatrist and a case manager that checks in with me even more regularly than that. What really needs improvement is the identifying of the seriously mentally ill, and getting them whatever treatment is appropriate and possible. Additionally, it needs to be easier to get help in a hurry if someone you know is obviously becoming unbalanced.

Although, even where those programs are available, such as here in Tucson, many people are unwilling to avail themselves of them because of the stigma mental illness still carries, or because they simply don't know that help is a single phone call away. I know from personal experience with the local system that the Giffords shooter could have been evaluated and potentially committed against his will quite readily, but his friends and teachers didn't think it was their place, and his parents didn't want to admit the problem was as bad as it was. That is the biggest problem in foreseeable cases such as that one. Other times, someone goes all the way crazy without any kind of overt signs and next thing you know they're up in a clock tower.

In those situations, there really is practically nothing to be done. 

[Büge]

Once more the luxury of being white in the United States is the freedom to have your violent deeds be a reflection of a personal failing, as opposed to a cultural or racial one. On a practical level, White privilege is a set of taken for granted and unearned advantages in life. On an abstract level, white privilege also removes certain questions from consideration regarding such matters as social deviancy and crime.

Something to think about.

[Ted Belmont]

I...what?

[A²]

There's quite enough crazy in here already without bringing the tumblr-speak in here.

[Ocksi]

It's true, but hardly relevant, I think? Any shade of brown would have been labeled terrorist or gangbanger or drug addict pretty much immediately. Probably not sick, though.

[Royal☭]

There is a point, though. The Fort Hood massacre was originally talked about as if it was a terrorist attack. Nobody started in on the more sympathetic mental illness angle.